What Must I Do to be Saved?

10:43 AM Sunday. I started out last night in prayer just before bed with reflection on the order of salvation. "Where am I, Holy Spirit, in the order of salvation?" Then early this morning, I listened to The Order of Salvation | Making Sense of Biblical Terms by Matthew Everhard. After this, I spent a long while studying both my Spiritual Direction webpage and last week's post titled Sunday Morning Worship Q4 2025 Goal. It was all a bit overwhelming, and it occurred to me that I need to make my workflow simpler and more integrated. What if I start out each Sunday morning by asking a single spiritual question for the week, and then proceed to explore that question through consultation with mentors, daily prayer, religious reading, and theological inquiry?

Consideration of this idea led me to review the first chapter in Spiritual Direction: Wisdom for the Long Walk of Faith by Henri J.M. Nouwen. Then I read Romans 8:28-30. This is the passage by Saint Paul from which the order of salvation is derived. But what about the words of Jesus in response to the question from the rich young leader in Matthew 19:16-30? Is this not more fundamental than the teaching of Paul? I briefly contemplated this section of the gospel before heading out on my 60-minute Sunday morning walk.

Along the way, I listened again to Aquinas 101 on Hope, and for the first time to Aquinas 101 on What is Faith? 

These two teachings from Aquinas 101 are important, profound, and deeply related to the question of the rich young leader. Is it through keeping the golden rule, through faith in the resurrection of Jesus Christ alone, or through total dedication of my resources to the Church founded by Jesus that I am saved? 

End 11:58 AM.